Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the move -- the first such visit by an incumbent Japanese prime minister since 2006 -- was "a flagrant provocation against international justice and treads arbitrarily on humanity's conscience", according to a ministry statement on its website.

Tensions between the two were already high over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

The Japanese embassy in Beijing said a meeting between Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong and visiting Japanese lawmakers had been cancelled.

Yasukuni is believed to be the repository of around 2.5 million souls of Japan's war dead, most of them common soldiers but also including 14 high-level officials indicted for war crimes after World War II.

"The essence of Japanese leaders' visits to the Yasukuni shrine is to beautify Japan's history of militaristic aggression and colonial rule," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement immediately after Abe's action.

Abe was "brutally trampling on the feelings of the Chinese people and those of other victimised Asian countries", he added.

China's ruling Communist Party seeks to bolster its public support by tapping into deep-seated resentment of Japan for its brutal invasion of the country in the 1930s.

Before and during World War II Japanese forces swept through much of east Asia, and their treatment of both civilians and prisoners of war was often appalling.

According to estimates by Chinese government researchers, China lost 20.6 million people directly from the war.

The 1937 Nanjing Massacre was one of the worst atrocities. Qin told reporters at a regular briefing that if Abe genuinely wanted to improve relations between Tokyo and its neighbours, "he should go to the memorial for the Nanjing Massacre rather than to Yasukuni shrine".

Even now the two countries' history is a key element of the backdrop to their bitter dispute over islands in the East China Sea, which Beijing sees as having been seized by Tokyo at the start of its expansionism.

The world's second- and third-biggest economies have significant business ties, but politically their relationship is often troubled. At times tensions over the islands have raised fears of a military incident.

Taiwan, which Japan colonised from 1895 to 1945, urged Tokyo to "face the facts and remember the lessons from history to refrain from taking any moves to hurt the people's feelings in neighbouring countries", according to a foreign ministry statement.

In a commentary soon after Abe's shrine visit, Xinhua said he "knows perfectly what he is doing and the consequences".

"Instead of a pledge against war, as Abe has claimed, the visit is a calculated provocation to stoke further tension," it said, adding that the visit "is the culmination of Abe's year-long policy of right-wing nationalism".

Users of China's popular social networks responded with fury, with many noting that Abe made his move on the same day that Chinese President Xi Jinping was paying tribute to Mao Zedong on the 120th anniversary of the former leader's birth.

"The base of Abe's power comes from his confrontation with China, so whatever upsets China, that's what he'll do," said one post.

"No matter what he says about China-Japan friendship, Asian prosperity and joint promotion of peace, it's all a facade."

The United States on Thursday criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a war shrine visit that infuriated Japan's neighbors, in a rare break to usually unstinting US support to its ally.

US advocacy of a stronger Japan -- including a more active security role by the officially pacifist country -- has been a core principle for Washington in a region marked by the rise of China and an increasingly worrisome North Korea.

But Abe, known for his passionate belief that Japan should take greater pride in its history, defied US admonitions -- until now voiced quietly -- to stay away from the Yasukuni shrine, which venerates the souls of 2.5 million Japanese war dead.

"Japan is a valued ally and friend. Nevertheless, the United States is disappointed that Japan's leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan's neighbors," a State Department statement said.

The US executive branch virtually never rebukes Japan, which Washington is bound by treaty to protect, except on trade issues.

China and fellow US ally South Korea voiced outrage over Abe's visit to the Yasukuni shrine, which in addition to common soldiers honors officials executed by a US-backed war crimes tribunal after World War II.

Abe made clear he did not intend to promote militarism, saying that he sought friendship with Chinese and Koreans, and had visited the shrine "to renew the pledge that Japan must never wage a war again."

Michael Green, who was former president George W. Bush's top adviser on Asia, said that many US officials were surprised by Abe's pilgrimage and believed that Vice President Joe Biden had successfully communicated US misgivings on a visit earlier this month.

"I think it's not so much a sense of moral outrage for the administration but a genuine disappointment because this distracts from so much of the momentum in the alliance at a critical time," said Green, now the senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Weeks earlier, the United States, Japan and South Korea had found common cause after China declared an air defense identification zone over a vast stretch of the East China Sea, which covers islands administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.

Abe was the first sitting prime minister to visit the Yasukuni shrine since Junichiro Koizumi, who defiantly went each year during his 2001-2006 tenure. The United States did not criticize Koizumi, who enjoyed a close relationship with Bush.

Green said the situation was different as Abe, whose grandfather was arrested but not charged as a war criminal, had an ideological reputation and was moving ahead on defense cooperation and other US-backed initiatives.

"China will oppose any effort to strengthen the US-Japan alliance. But we in the US need (South) Korea to be on its side as Japan undertakes these reforms," Green said.

Both sides aware of fallout

Abe, who did not visit the Yasukuni shrine during a previous stint as prime minister, returned to power in part by accusing a left-leaning government of jeopardizing the US alliance through a feud over a military base in Okinawa.

With a timing that some observers doubted was coincidental, Abe just a day before his shrine visit pleased Washington by pushing through a long-elusive deal on the Futenma base.

The Abe government this week also broke post-World War II Japanese precedent by supplying ammunition to another country -- which, tellingly, it sent to South Korea for peacekeeping in troubled South Sudan.

Despite the rift over the shrine, experts believe that both sides had an interest in limiting the fallout. Abe, whatever his ideology, generally shares US goals and has enthusiastically entered talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an emerging trade deal important to President Barack Obama.

"The US does want to show strong support for Japan as it struggles with some of these territorial issues with its neighbors," said Weston Konishi, an Asia expert recently named director of the disaster preparedness organization Peace Winds America.

"But at the same time the US is very concerned about Prime Minister Abe's views toward history and how that might exacerbate tensions," he said. "It certainly complicates what the US is trying to do in Asia."

Japan's PM set for breakthrough on controversial US baseTokyo (AFP) Dec 25, 2013
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe looks set to win approval from Okinawa this week for the long-stalled relocation of a US military base after a meeting Wednesday with the island's pugnacious governor.
A deal with Okinawa would end a long-running dispute that has been a source of friction with Washington and also mark a significant achievement for Abe, who has sought closer US ties amid a ... read more

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